Family news update

The internet is back on.

The rain has stopped. Lots of beggars coming to the door: minor flooding here, but a lot of them who live along the river have water in their homes....I ran out of change and had to turn some of them away until I went to the ATM. Only one of the usual ATM's was working (internet outage means they have to reset them) and waited in line 15 minutes.

The local news says that half a million are displaced and 17 dead in the flooding. We are "upstream", so usually the main danger is if the dams break.

But a lot of the "displaced" and flooded out are squatters or those who build houses along the riverbanks or in the flood plains of the rivers: But as this article points out,  it's not the squatters but the failure of the politicians to build proper drainage that cause the flooding. Resettling the squatters just makes it hard for them to make a living by placing them far from their jobs. So urban planning is a major problem too (including those suburbs built in flood prone areas because no one stopped them).

 That is why the headlines in all the newspapers today are about the latest scandals: development money going to "NGO's" being diverted into politicians pockets via fake NGO's.

Sigh.

I went to the mall ("Waltermart") with Ruby to pick up Lolo's medicines and some cleaning supplies from the hardware store. We also picked up "Japanese soimai" from the kiosk for Lolo: Instead of being wrapped in dough, these are wrapped in black seaweed and have a piece of fake crab in the middle.

 Another kiosk sells Pizza including "Hawaiian" pizza (with pineapple) but we ate at Mc Donalds.

Strategy page had an article a few days ago about China's young, who are now big and fat due to less hard work and more westernized diet. Well, with the kids taking tricycles to school and the cheap fast food places we won't be far behind (McD hamburger is expensive, 70 pesos, about 2 dollars, but the kiosks sell them for 25 pesos, about 60 cents).